s not to keep the Duc d'Humieres waiting; but I was so astonished that I
stood stock still.

I took Simiane, first gentleman of his chamber, into a window, and
testified to him my surprise and my fear at the state in which I saw M.
le Duc d'Orleans.

Simiane replied that for a long time he had been so in the morning; that
to-day there was nothing extraordinary about him, and that I was
surprised simply because I did not see him at those hours; that nothing
would be seen when he had shaken himself a little in dressing. There was
still, however, much to be seen when he came to dress himself. The
Regent received the thanks of the Duc d'Humieres with an astonished and
heavy air; he who always was so gracious and so polite to everybody, and
who so well knew how to express himself, scarcely replied to him! A
moment after, M. d'Humieres and I withdrew. We dined with the Duc de
Gesvres, who led him to the King to thank his Majesty.

The condition of M. le Duc d'Orleans made me make many reflections. For
a very long time the Secretaries of State had told me that during the
first hours of the morning they could have made him pass anything they
wished, or sign what might have been the most hurtful to him. It was the
fruit of his suppers. Within the last year he himself had more than once
told me that Chirac doctored him unceasingly, without effect; because he
was so full that he sat down to table every evening without hunger,
without any desire to eat, though he took nothing in the morning, and
simply a cup of chocolate between one and two o'clock in the day (before
everybody), it being then the time to see him in public. I had not kept
dumb with him thereupon, but all my representations were perfectly
useless. I knew moreover, that Chirac had continually told him that the
habitual continuance of his suppers would lead him to apoplexy, or dropsy
on the chest, because his respiration was interrupted at times; upon
which he had cried out against this latter malady, which was a slow,
suffocating, annoying preparation for death, saying that he preferred
apoplexy, which surprised and which killed at once, without allowing time
to think of it!

Another man, instead of crying out against this kind of death with which
he was menaced, and of preferring another, allowing him no time for
reflection, would have thought about leading a sober, healthy, and decent
life, which, with the temperament he had, would have procured him a ve